On matters of intonation and technicalities I am more than a martinet – I am a martinetissimo.

As a boy I remember how terribly real the statues of the saints would seem at 7 o’clock Mass-before I’d had breakfast. From that I learned always to conduct hungry.

Conscience is that which hurts when everything else feels marvelous.

Music comes from the heart and returns to the heart... music is spontaneous, impulsive expression... its range is without limit... forever growing... can be one element to help us build a new conception of life in which the madness and cruelty of wars will be replaced by a simple understanding of the brotherhood of man.

I simply make music, and people have always been foolish enough to pay me for it. I never told them that I would have done it all for nothing.

The highest reaches of music come thrillingly close to the central core and essence of life itself.

Music can be all things to all persons. It is like a great dynamic sun in the center of a solar system which sends out its rays and inspiration in every direction.... Music makes us feel that the heavens open and a divine voice calls. Something in our souls responds and understands.

Music appeals to me for what can be done with it.

It seemed impossible to leave the world until I had produced all that I felt called upon to produce, and so I endured this wretched existence an excitable body which a sudden change can throw from the best into the worst state. Patience I must now choose for my guide, and I have done so. Divine One, thou lookest into my inmost soul, thou knowest it, thou knowest that love of man and desire to do good live therein.

I believe in a passionately strong feeling for the poetry of life - for the beautiful, the mysterious, the romantic, the ecstatic - the loveliness of Nature, the lovability of people, everything that excites us, everything that starts our imagination working, LAUGHTER, gaiety, strength, heroism, love, tenderness, every time we see - however dimly - the godlike that is in everyone and want to kneel in reverence.